Pinocchio

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie.  I'm sure that this high tech remake of the 1940 animated classic, Pinocchio, was made with the best of intentions.  And while it follows the expected story beats of the Disney film, it still ends up being hollow, charmless, and about as unnecessary of a remake as that one time Vince Vaughn tried to step into Anthony Perkins' shoes and play Norman Bates.  

This is surprisingly the second of three Pinocchio movies we're getting in 2022.  The first was an animated film from earlier this year that featured 90s relic, Pauly Shore, as the voice of the wooden boy, and is one I will continue to happily claim I have not seen.  And at the end of the year, we're getting a stop motion telling from Guillermo Del Toro, which has been a passion project for the filmmaker for a number of years.  This remake of the Disney film has been helmed by Robert Zemeckis, a director who has been famous for pushing the boundaries of special effects and animation, sometimes to brilliant effect (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), and sometimes to creepy, lifeless effect (The Polar Express, Welcome to Marwen).  His Pinocchio falls somewhere in the middle.  While the effects work here is impressive from time to time, it never quite seems convincing when the CG puppet, cat, fish, or whatever are interacting with human star Tom Hanks.  

I don't have to tell you that Hanks is one of the most warm and comforting presences in movies, but his portrayal of Gepetto here is the rare moment when a Hanks performance turned me off.  He's all forced whimsy as the kindly old woodcarver.  Hiding his face behind big glasses and a bushy white mustache, and with a wild mop of white hair on his head, he never comes close to giving a real performance.  He's just doing a goofy accent and an overly hammy portrayal, rather than creating a connection with the audience.  He has effortlessly pulled off portraying warm, iconic personalities like Santa Claus, Mr. Rogers, and even Walt Disney in the past, but here, he's gimmicky and overblown.  So is the movie itself, so maybe he's just playing along.  All I know is this counts as the only time I can think of when I wasn't happy seeing him on the screen.

Like in the 1940 film, Gepetto is a lonely old man who surrounds himself with toys and cuckoo clocks.  In this movie, the clocks all reference other Disney films, which is more distracting than funny.  He's been given a bit more backstory than before, as he has a dead wife and son that he pines for, but since the movie forgets about this as soon as its established, it may as well not have been added in.  Also here is Jiminy Cricket, whose voice is provided by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  He does his best to mimic the original voice of Cliff Edwards from the earlier movie, but again, it just comes across as a rare performance from a talented actor that I quickly turned away from.  Old Gepetto makes a wish on the Wishing Star that the puppet he built could be a real boy, and this brings about the Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo, making the most of very limited screen time), who grants his wish.

Pinocchio (voice by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) is brought to life though advanced computer animation, and while his design is strong and he resembles the original animated look, there is something flat and lifeless to him.  I don't blame Ainsworth, as he's a good child actor, and sells his lines well.  His design just never quite blends in with the backgrounds well enough.  At least he comes across better than Gepetto's pets, Figaro the Kitten and Cleo the Fish, whom Hanks is forced to carry around at all times, leading to one of the movie's most unintentionally funniest images, which finds him walking through a rainstorm desperately looking for the missing wooden boy, and carrying a CG cat and fishbowl with him for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  

If you've seen the earlier Disney classic, you know what happens.  While heading off to school, Pinocchio comes across the devious fox Honest John (voice by Keegan-Michael Key) who now likes to make modern day references about social media influences and actor Chris Pine for some reason.  This leads him to perform in a puppet show where he meets the cruel Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston), and a kindly little girl named Fabiana (Kyanne Lamaya), who is one of the few additions not in the original that works, as Lamaya gives the best performance in the film.  Pinocchio is then whisked away to Pleasure Island, where kids can break stuff and be naughty.  In the earlier film, the kids were drinking alcohol and smoking cigars.  That obviously wouldn't fly in 2022, so the kids here eat too much candy, smash stuff, and drink root beer instead.  Pinocchio and Gepetto are reunited when they are lost at sea, but then get swallowed by Monstro, who has been upgraded here from a massive whale to a sea monster that resembles a whale, only with giant tentacles growing out of it.  It's not an improvement.

Despite the similarities to the film so many grew up with, this Pinocchio just feels as unnecessary as a remake has ever been.  The few things that have been added don't improve the story in any way, and everything just has this obnoxiously whimsical quality to it that feels forced instead of earned.  The movie throws a lot of warm imagery and intentionally hokey dialogue at us ("What in the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks is going on?"), but it all just feels so desperate.  There is an emptiness here.  You know how you're supposed to be reacting to what the movie is showing you, but you don't, because it all feels so manipulative somehow.  Most of the songs you remember from the original are here, with a few new ones provided by Zemeckis' regular composer, Alan Silvestri, and songwriter Glen Ballard, but they are quickly forgotten.  The cast is energetic, and the budget granted to the film was obviously generous, but it just comes across as hollow instead of wondrous.  

I am not opposed to Disney doing remakes of their animated classics, and have even enjoyed some, such as Kenneth Branagh's take on Cinderella, or the remake of Pete's Dragon from 2016, which remains the very best of these kind of films.  But so many of these simply try to recreate the original only with more expensive visuals that strangely wind up looking more lifeless than the original animated drawings.  2019's The Lion King  immediately jumps to mind, or Beauty and the Beast from 2017.  Just like those films, Pinocchio simply draws upon audiences' memories without giving them a worthwhile experience, and while the efforts are noble, they end up being heartless and lacking any emotion whatsoever.  I end up watching these films in sadness, because I want to be swept away, but end up with a lessened experience thanks to the lifeless special effects.

It's ironic that a film about a wooden puppet who longs to be real and learns to love ends up being so dead inside.  Here is a movie that wants to warm our hearts, but is so mechanical in its manipulations, it ends up being artificial and completely unnecessary. 

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